Clinton Begins Pacific Visit in Manila

By DOUGLAS JEHL,

Published: November 13, 1994

MANILA, Sunday, Nov. 13—
President Clinton began a Pacific tour here this morning with somber stops to honor nearly a century of economic and security ties between the United States and the Philippines, its first colony.

With visits to Corregidor Island and an American military cemetery, Mr. Clinton is seeking to honor American-Filipino suffering at the outset of World War II and the fighting that finally liberated the Philippines from Japanese control in the final months of the conflict.

"This week the American people told us, all of us here in Washington, to work together, to put politics aside to create a stronger, more secure America," the President said in setting out on his journey. He said his nine-day trip to the Philippines, Indonesia and Hawaii would "give us the unique opportunity to join hands and do just that."

The main focus of Mr. Clinton's trip is expanding trade throughout the Asia-Pacific region, and the conference of regional leaders that begins on Monday near Jakarta will serve as its centerpiece.

Mr. Clinton began his day today with a breakfast for American business executives at which Secretary of State Warren Christopher was the host. He told them that the Export-Import Bank was making available $100 million in new assistance for the Philippines, and his talks with President Fidel Ramos were to include discussions about widening trade between the two countries. Total trade last year was $7.8 billion.

After visiting Italy, Britain and France last summer to commemorate the Allied invasions of Europe 50 years ago, Mr. Clinton was using his only full day in the Philippines in large part to honor veterans of the war in the Pacific.

After arriving here late Saturday night, Mr. Clinton was formally welcomed by President Ramos this morning in a gala ceremony at Malacanang Palace, the one-time residence of American Governors-General, including William Howard Taft. The palace has been the seat of the head of the Philippine Government since the mid-1930's, and Mr. Ramos has lived there since succeeding Corazon C. Aquino in June 1992.

The two Presidents flew later by helicopter to Corregidor, the rocky, four-mile-long island that guards the entrance to Manila Bay and which served as the headquarters for General Douglas MacArthur and the Philippines Government during a siege that lasted nearly five months at the onset of World War II.

The island fortress was held by Japanese forces for nearly three years until it was recaptured by American paratroopers in February 1945, and on this muggy morning, Mr. Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, gazed quietly upon the bombed-out barracks and rubbled tunnels that have been left as a memorial.

Among the Clintons' guides was Col. Alfred A. Xerez-Burgos, 76, a Filipino survivor of the Bataan March, in which 60,000 American and Filipino prisoners were forced to travel on foot over a forbidding peninsula just across a narrow channel from Corregidor.

Back in the capital at midday, the Clinton planned a visit to the 152-acre Manila American Cemetery, where 17,206 American and Filipino soldiers are buried. As a United States military graveyard, the cemetery is second in size only to Arlington National Cemetery, and Mr. Clinton planned an address from the memorial at its center, where the names of more than 36,000 American troops missing after the war in the Pacific are inscribed on limestone pillars that form a circular wall.

In remarks prepared for his delivery there, Mr. Clinton praised "the spirit of Bataan and Corregidor," and he declared: "Nothing protects us and our freedom like the vigilance of memory."

This is the fifth time this year that Mr. Clinton has undertaken a foreign tour, and his aides say he is almost certain to visit American soldiers in Haiti and might also fly to Budapest for a summit meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe by year's end. Thus Mr. Clinton could surpass a mark set by George Bush, whose six overseas journeys in 1990 were the most ever by an American President.

But while Mr. Clinton once scorned Mr. Bush for devoting too much attention to foreign affairs, his aides say he will most likely maintain just as heavy a schedule of foreign travel next year. That schedule could increase if the President sees foreign affairs as a refuge from a hostile new Republican Congress, as he has given signs of doing.

Mr. Clinton is the first American President since Gerald R. Ford to visit the Philippines. The trip comes at a time when the two countries are trying to redefine their relationship after the withdrawal in November 1992 of the last United States sailors and Navy vessels. The Philippines refused to renew a lease on the American naval base, at Subic Bay.

An agreement giving formal approval for American warships to refuel and pick up food supplies in the Philippines is to be signed next month, but its disclosure generated sharp complaints this week in the Philippine Senate. A series of small anti-American protests has also been held in advance of Mr. Clinton's visit, with demonstrators contending that the United States should do more to clean up toxic wastes left behind at the Subic base and at Clark Air Base, which was abandoned by the United States after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991.

Among those accompanying Mr. Clinton are Anthony Lake, the national security adviser; Samuel R. Berger, the deputy national security adviser; Robert E. Rubin, assistant for economic policy; Thomas F. McLarty 3d, the counselor to the President, and George Stephanopoulos, a senior adviser.

Leon E. Panetta, the chief of staff, and the rest of Mr. Clinton's political team, including Harold Ickes, the deputy chief of staff, have stayed in Washington to assess the political damage from Tuesday's elections and to begin to devise a strategy for the next two years.

Photo: President Clinton was met by Vice President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines as he arrived with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, at the Manila airport late yesterday. The next stop on his Asian trip will be Indonesia, where he will attend a summit meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. (Reuters) Map shows the location of Corregidor Island.